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I haven’t written here for ages and it feels really weird to be back, a good kind of weird.

The last three months have been tough for everybody around the world.

2020 has not started in the way we all wished and it has brought with it many changes, some good, some not that good.

I have found myself lost at the beginning of the lock down; all we had to do was to stay at home for our safety. Work from home, study from home, having the groceries delivered at home. It does not sound that complicated, does it? But nobody liked the lack of freedom. Freedom to go for a walk, freedom to go shopping, freedom to go and visit friends and family.

After a couple of weeks we were accustomed to our new routines, staying in bed longer hours, cooking with the ingredients we had at home (I cooked a lot!), making the best of our “free time”.

Then they said we could go out again, wearing masks, keeping distances from other people. The first time we left our house we were scared, scared of leaving a safe place and going out in the “infected” world. We went out more and more and we were less and less scared.

It finally came the time when they told us that we could go and visit our families and friends. Here is where most expats families felt left out. We are expats, we have chosen to live abroad, we have consciously chosen to live abroad. What we have NOT chosen is not being able to go back to our Countries as easily as it used to be. Usually, we would go back to Italy during summertime, from Warsaw it’s only a two hours flight and it’s not even expensive. Now this option has been taken away from us, for our safety of course, but still. We don’t know when we will be able to go and visit our families, the grandparents are not getting any younger and they are missing their grandchildren so much!

Up to now we have been communicating daily with the grandparents, having long video calls. The other day we found another special way to feel a little bit closer to them. Little Mr. Copycat has recently mastered his reading skills in Italian so I had an idea. I registered him while he was reading a story and sent it via mail to his grandparents. When they received this special audio, their hearts melted. They felt like their grandson was in their room. They decided in turn to record a short poem and send it back to him. I love to think that this could be the start of a very special collection of memories.